Comparative Essay

Courage
Courage is the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty without fear. Courage is not something that you distribute, but a trait you develop over time. Many people have faced tough challenges throughout their lives. The difference between people persevering and people that do not, results in them giving up. In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, presents the idea of courage through the characters; Mrs. Dubouse, Atticus and Boo Radley. Mrs. Dubose is a morphine addict who uses morphine as her painkillers to keep her self stable. Atticus is a lawyer who went against Maycomb, to defend a black man who is innocent. Boo Radley on the other hand is a confined man who never sets foot outside of his house, in exception to the incident where he saves Jem and Scout.
Mrs. Dubose is an elderly, wicked, racist woman who has been taking morphine for years. This painkiller is the only way she is still alive, and her hopes were to stop taking her dosage, so she may pass away drug-free. Everyday, Mrs. Dubose had reduced her intake of medication to abandon her pain, demonstrating moral courage. In the end, “It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs. Dubouse won, all ninety eight pounds of her” (Lee 115). Mrs. Dubose did not fear death and knew that taking her painkillers was the only way to make things easier, but confronted it wanting to leave peacefully. As Jem read to Mrs. Dubose every day for a month, after ripping up her camellias, he did not know that he is distracting her from the pain. Most of the time she would be expecting for the alarm clock to ring while Jem read. As the children noticed, the alarm clock would ring a few minutes later every day, they stayed back a few minutes later everyday, by that time, Mrs. Dubose had already been in her fits. "She’s not suffering any more. She was sick for a long time. Son,...